DoD needs better safeguards on vendor purchases

The Department of Defense's cybersecurity challenge involves many complex issues, including finding ways to ensure quality of service for its IT network infrastructure. An insightful article in National Defense Magazine argues that the current acquisition culture makes it difficult to tie together the resources needed to create a secure environment and obtain that quality of service.

The magazine said that the federal government spends billions of dollars on IT products and services, but does not hold its vendors accountable for security breaches. Moreover, the article argues that current contracting practices fail to provide financial incentives to contractors to protect government networks from attacks.

This system has resulted in the DoD's cyber efforts being directed toward obtaining "technical solutions" rather than high quality support. Unfortunately, that quality support does not reside in the government workforce, and is not being adequately supplied by the contractors.

The situation is quite different in the private sector, where the most highly regarded contracts are "service level agreements" that establish measurable performance indicators for services provided by vendors. It appears it's time for the DoD to consider following the private sector model, and move away from the standard contract approach used today to create greater accountability and network security.

For more:
- check out this National Defense Magazine article

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